Have you ever had the feeling? Even though you arrived first, it's like someone has been waiting for you in that spot all along.
Not the ordinary "seat taken" kind of reservation.
The kind where, the second you sit down, your back goes cold, and you feel a pair of eyes staring at you—for a very, very long time.
My name is Lin Shu. I was in my second year of graduate school, stuck in the middle of my thesis. My supervisor said my literature review was too weak and told me to add at least forty more core journal articles. The university library was too noisy, and my roommate gamed until two in the morning, so I had no choice but to go to the 24-hour study room just outside the east gate of campus.
It was called a study room, but it was really just an old residential building converted into one, with over thirty cubbies crammed into a three-bedroom apartment. The monthly pass was 380 yuan. The only reason it was cheap was that someone had died in the building—two years prior, a girl preparing for the postgraduate entrance exam had jumped from the top floor. The landlord didn't hide it; he told me straight when I viewed the room. I checked my balance on Alipay and gritted my teeth.
On my first night, the guy in the next cubicle started snoring. It was muffled, like an old washing machine spinning. A little past eleven, I got up to knock and wake him.
The hallway lights were sound-activated. I stamped my foot, and they flickered on.
His door was open. The cubicle was empty. On his desk lay several books, a dark gray thermos, and a half-pack of soda crackers. The books were for postgraduate politics, flipped to the chapter on materialist dialectics. A name label was stuck on the thermos, but the writing was worn beyond recognition.
I went back to my seat. Half an hour later, the snoring continued. I took off my headphones and listened closely—the sound wasn't coming from next door. It felt like it was coming from inside the wall, deep and muffled, as if someone was breathing right against the other side.
I cursed under my breath, put my headphones back on, and kept working on my thesis. I fell asleep at my desk a little past one.
I woke up at three forty-seven in the morning. My phone screen lit up, but there were no new messages. Yet the last edit time on my thesis document was 3:12—and I had fallen asleep before one.
I didn't think much of it. As I packed up to leave, a note had appeared on my desk.
It wasn't tucked in a book, nor slipped under the door. It was placed neatly right in the center. It was the back of a convenience store receipt, with a few words written in ballpoint pen, pressed so hard the paper was punctured in several small holes.
"This seat is mine."
It was nearly four in the morning. Only three or four people remained in the study room, all wearing headphones with their heads down. No one was looking at me. The snoring guy had returned at some point, lying on his desk in a deep sleep. I stared at the note for a few seconds, crumpled it up, threw it in the trash, slung my bag over my shoulder, and left.
The next night, I switched seats. By the window, with the radiator humming softly. I'd only typed a few words when my hand touched something next to the keyboard.
Another note. The same convenience store receipt, the same ballpoint pen, the same handwriting.
"I know wherever you sit."
The hairs on my back stood on end. That disgusting feeling of being watched washed over me, like something slimy crawling up my spine. I spun around sharply. The hallway was empty. The sound-activated lights were off, leaving everything in darkness. I stood up and checked the nearby cubicles—the girl with glasses to my left was watching online lectures, the middle-aged man to my right was doing civil service exam problems. No one was looking at me. Nothing seemed out of place.
I slipped the note into the inner pocket of my wallet and kept reading.
The study room had all kinds of people. Maybe I'd taken someone's "special seat." But one was the third from the left the first day, the second from the end by the window the second—they were far apart. Unless someone was watching me specifically.
Unless the note had been there all along.
I'd checked the desk before sitting down. Nothing there. I sat, turned on my laptop, bent down to grab my charging cable, and looked up—there it was. Less than a minute had passed.
On the third day, I stayed in the window seat. I arrived at six and stayed until ten at night, with nothing out of the ordinary happening. I started to think I was overimagining things. Just as I was about to pack up and leave, I looked up, and another note lay on my desk.
This time, I was certain I hadn't left my seat even once—except for a bathroom break at around nine. My laptop had stayed on, the screen bright, my thesis paused on page seventeen. When I returned, the note was pressed directly over my keyboard, half on the spacebar, half hanging off. The window was closed; the wind couldn't have done it.
It said three words:
"Turn around."
I didn't look back. In that moment, I had a strange, cold intuition—if I turned around, I would see something that would shatter everything I knew about the world. I'd rather believe it was a prank than find out for real. I stuffed the note in my pocket, shut down my computer, and left.
As I reached the door, I couldn't help glancing back.
The desk lamp was still on. The surface was empty. But on the wall behind the seat, near the ceiling, there was a tiny, unnoticeable round hole, about as thick as a ballpoint pen refill. I couldn't be sure if I'd seen it before.
I stepped outside. Cold wind rushed into my collar, and my back was soaked with sweat. I touched my pocket and suddenly realized something was wrong. I'd thrown away the first note, kept the second and third—but now there were four in my pocket.
I stood under a streetlamp and spread them out. The first: *This seat is mine*. The second: *I know wherever you sit*. The third: *Turn around*. The fourth wasn't a receipt. It was a polaroid photo, with a white border and a small yellowish stain in the top-left corner.
It was a picture of me.
Taken from behind. I was sleeping with my head on the desk, my backpack strap and the edge of my laptop screen visible to my right. The angle was low, as if the camera had been placed on the ground. I could even see the part in my hair. A handwritten timestamp was in the bottom-right corner:
2024.11.15 03:12.
Three twelve.
The time my computer had woken up.
While I was asleep.
I didn't remember anyone taking my photo. I didn't remember anyone approaching me. I didn't remember anyone holding a camera to the back of my head and pressing the shutter while I slept.
On the back of the photo, more writing in the same hard, forceful ballpoint pen:
"Good night."
I didn't call the police. Tell them someone was leaving me notes in a study room? They'd ask if I'd lost anything valuable. I hadn't. They'd just say: switch study rooms. I understood the logic, but I couldn't swallow the anger. It wasn't fear—it was the fury of being treated like a toy. Someone had invaded my space, stood behind me, taken photos, left notes, and I hadn't noticed a thing. That feeling was worse than terror.
I decided to find out what was going on. Not because I was brave, but because I was poor. There was no other study room in the city as cheap as 380 a month. Besides, by the fifth day, I'd grown numb—irritated more than scared, thinking *Here we go again, can't you just stop?* It was like a dripping faucet in a rental apartment: you can't sleep the first night, but after a week, you stop hearing it.
On the fifth day, the note changed.
I arrived early, at four in the afternoon, and picked a seat facing the hallway. I propped my phone on the desk, started recording, with the lens covering the front and the aisle behind me. I put on headphones and read academic papers.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nothing unusual. The postgrad guy next to me ate three buns for dinner, splashing oil on his review book, then wiped it off with his sleeve. The girl across from me doing her journal dropped stickers everywhere, hit her head on the desk while bending down, and let out a quiet groan. Everything was perfectly normal.
At 9:12, I got up to use the bathroom. I was gone less than four minutes. When I returned, my headphones were around my neck, the screen was on, everything looked the same. But inside the paperclip box in the upper-right corner of my keyboard, something new had appeared.
A key.
Old and brass, with a loop of yellowed transparent tape wrapped around the head. Written on it in ballpoint pen were two characters:
"Roof."
I immediately picked up my phone and replayed the footage. At 9:12, I left the frame. Only an empty chair and half the desk remained. No one passed through the hallway. The image stayed still for roughly three minutes, then I came back. No second person appeared in the recording.
I slowed it down and watched carefully. At 9:12:35, something glinted briefly on the edge of the paperclip box. It was too fast to see at normal speed; even in slow motion, it only lasted two or three frames.
I turned the brightness to maximum and went frame by frame.
First frame: box empty.
Second frame: a blurry yellow dot.
Third frame: the dot clear, shaped like a key.
No hand appeared between any of the frames. No shadow fell on the desk.
The key had simply appeared out of thin air.
I stared at the screen for a long time, then made a decision that probably wasn't rational. I picked up the key and headed for the roof.
The study room was on the sixth floor, the top floor. I went up the fire escape to an iron gate, secured with a new padlock. My brass key didn't fit; the lock was old-fashioned. I felt above the doorframe and found a small magnetic box, which pulled right off. Inside was a rusted old lock, and another brass key identical to the one I held.
I swapped the locks and opened the gate.
The rooftop was small, with concrete flooring and a parapet about waist-high. Discarded steel pipes, half a bag of cement, and broken bricks lay scattered around. The wind was strong, stinging my ears. I swept my flashlight around and saw nothing. Just as I was about to go back down, the light hit the edge of the parapet and froze.
Someone had written a line on the concrete in marker pen, faded badly from sun and wind, but still legible up close:
"I will always be watching you."
The handwriting was different from the notes. The notes had been forceful, short, and gritted, like someone squeezing the pen too hard. This writing was neat, even delicate—like a girl's.
I thought of the girl who'd jumped two years before. Postgraduate exam. From this very rooftop. Two years later, I was getting mysterious notes in the study room below, telling me to come up, where words were written saying I was being watched. If this was a prank, the person behind it was disturbingly twisted. If it wasn't…
I cut the thought off. Not out of fear, but because it was unscientific. I was an engineering student, majoring in fluid mechanics. We relied on repeatable, verifiable experimental results—not ghost stories.
But what happened next left me with no scientific explanation.
On the sixth day, I didn't go to the study room. I stayed in the dorm all day, revising my thesis and playing games with my roommate Lao Zhou. He asked why I looked so terrible. I said I hadn't slept well. He asked if that cheap study room was haunted—the one where someone died. I told him to stop talking nonsense. He said he wasn't making it up. A few days earlier, he'd passed the building late at night and seen all the lights on the sixth floor blazing, even though the building cleared everyone out at eleven. He'd walked past at a little past two.
I checked the study room rules. The notice at the door said opening hours: 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. It was newly pasted. Underneath, an older notice had been torn halfway, leaving only a few words visible:
"Midnight… forbidden… overnight stay."
I called the landlord and asked what time the study room really closed. He paused for two seconds, then said eleven at night, just like the sign said. I told him I'd been there until early morning for days—why hadn't he locked up? The line went quiet for a long time. Then the landlord said something that made my scalp prickle:
"Lin Shu, your monthly pass is for daytime only. After eleven p.m., your access card won't work."
I said I swiped out every morning at around three or four. He said it was impossible. According to the system, my last successful swipe was at 6:13 p.m. five days ago. No swipes after that.
I hung up and checked my Alipay payment records. I had indeed entered the study room at around six that afternoon. But every day after that, I'd left at three or four a.m., swiping my card to open the glass door each time.
That night, I tested it. I walked to the glass door, held my card to the sensor—nothing. No light, no beep. I hesitated, then pushed. The door swung open easily, without resistance.
I tried again the next day. This time I held the card directly over the sensor for three full seconds. Still nothing. But the door opened once more.
On the seventh day, I went back. Not because I wasn't scared, but because my damn thesis still needed twelve more papers reviewed. The first draft was due next week, and my supervisor said if I didn't hand it in, I couldn't participate in the pre-defense. Fear, sometimes, meant nothing next to a deadline.
I brought a voice recorder. Brand new, capable of twelve straight hours of recording, clipped to my collar with the mic facing forward. I also brought a high-powered flashlight and a utility knife. Having them in my pockets made me feel slightly safer.
At eight in the evening, the study room wasn't crowded. The postgrad guy was there, the journaling girl too, plus a few new faces. Everything was normal. At nine, the journaling girl left. At ten, the postgrad guy packed up too. Before leaving, he glanced at me, opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, then closed it and slung his bag over his shoulder. He paused for a second and whispered:
"Be… careful."
Then he left.
At half past ten, the remaining people trickled out. At exactly eleven, the hallway lights went out.
Not like the sound-activated lights fading—every light in the hallway died at once. I looked up at the meter box on the wall; the indicator was still lit. No power trip. At 11:15, the study room lights began flickering, rhythmically, on and off, as if someone was flipping the switch repeatedly.
I stood up and walked to the door. The hallway outside was pitch-black. Stamping did nothing to trigger the lights. The green exit sign glowed dimly, painting the stairwell walls like something under water.
I decided to leave. I reached the stairwell and glanced back toward the study room.
At the far end of the hallway, the lamp above my seat flickered on. Not the white light of fluorescent tubes, but a warm, yellowish glow, like an old incandescent bulb. Beneath the light, someone was sitting in my seat.
I couldn't see their face. Only a silhouette, back facing me, leaning over the desk as if reading. Long hair fell loose, draping onto the table. They wore light-colored clothes with wide sleeves, glowing faintly under the light.
I called out. No reply. I took two steps forward. The figure didn't move. I called again, louder, my voice echoing down the empty hallway. Slowly, the figure lifted their head—but didn't turn around. Just stared straight at the wall ahead.
Then the light went out.
I turned on my flashlight and shone it forward. The seat was empty. I walked over. The desk was clean—no books, no notes, no keys. Not even dust. But a faint scent lingered in the air, like gardenia, or an old-fashioned shampoo.
I knelt down and shone the light under the chair. Something small and plastic lay on the floor, white and oval, with a button. I picked it up. It was a voice recorder.
The exact same brand as the one clipped to my collar. But this one was older, its casing scratched, the button greasy with fingerprints. I pressed play. Only one recording.
Breathing. Soft, slow, the steady inhale and exhale of someone asleep. After about ten seconds, a quieter sound emerged, like paper being flipped. A few more seconds passed, and a very soft female voice spoke, as if from far away—or directly into the mic:
"Can't sleep either?"
I snapped my head up.
No one. The flashlight beam swept across thirty empty cubicles. As it passed the last row, I noticed someone crouched under the corner desk.
The light landed directly on her. She was huddled under the table, arms wrapped around her knees, face buried in her legs. Hair fell down on both sides, covering her entire face. She wore a white nightdress, its hem dragging on the floor, stained with dark marks.
I stood frozen, light still on her. She didn't move. I slowly backed away until I reached the stairwell, then turned and ran. Six flights of stairs in under a minute. I tripped on the second-floor landing, slamming my knee on the step, tears stinging my eyes. I got up and kept running, bursting out the main door and into the street.
Streetlights were on. An occasional car passed by. A barbecue stall across the road was open, smoke drifting over, making me cough. I bent over and gasped for breath. Blood from my knee ran down my calf, dripping onto my shoes.
I pulled the voice recorder from my collar and pressed play. Only my breathing, my panting from running, and the distant noise of the barbecue stall. I listened several times, about to turn it off, when suddenly—
A female voice. Soft, clear, as if speaking right into my ear:
"Why are you running?"
My hand shook, and the recorder nearly slipped from my grasp. I immediately replayed it. This time the voice was even clearer, right after my heavy breathing—like she had been right behind me the whole time.
I held my phone, hesitated, then dialed 110. When the call connected, I suddenly didn't know what to say. Tell them there was a girl crouching under a desk in a study room? The operator asked where I was. I gave the address. They said someone had already reported noise disturbance from the building, and officers were on their way.
The police car arrived in three minutes. two officers, one older, one younger. The older one, surnamed Liu, was in his forties, clearly used to midnight calls. I gave a simple account, leaving out the notes and photos, only saying I thought someone was in the study room and had run out in fright. Officer Liu told me to wait downstairs while he and the younger officer went up.
I squatted by the entrance, my knee still bleeding, my hands trembling uncontrollably. After about ten minutes, footsteps came down the stairs. Officer Liu came out alone, his expression calm, even tired, as if he'd handled a hundred calls like this.
"No one upstairs."
"That's impossible, I definitely—"
"The study room door was locked, lights off," he cut me off, his tone flat as commenting on the weather. "Tables and chairs were neatly arranged. Not a single piece of paper out of place. No dust disturbed on any desk. Who did you say was there?"
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
"Kid, is your thesis stressing you out too much? Are you hallucinating?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know how. I had seen her. The girl under the desk, white nightdress, hanging hair.
Officer Liu patted my shoulder. "Go home and get some rest. Don't go back to that place."
Then he got in the car and left.
I stood there, staring up at the sixth floor. The study room windows were dark, nothing visible. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something behind those windows was watching me.
My phone vibrated. It was a message from the landlord:
"Lin Shu, no need to come tomorrow. I'll refund your monthly pass."
I replied:
"What happened?"
No response.
I stared at the chat screen, and my back went cold again. I remembered what Lao Zhou had said—seeing all the sixth-floor lights on in the middle of the night.
I never went back to that study room. I forced myself to finish the thesis, submitted the first draft, attended the pre-defense, and passed smoothly. Three years later, I passed by the building again.
It was still standing, but the study room sign was gone. A notice on the first floor read:
"This building scheduled for demolition."
I stood downstairs for a long time. All the sixth-floor windows were broken, looking exactly like a place about to be torn down.
I was about to leave when something on the ground caught my eye.
A photo. Polaroid, white border, with a small yellowish stain in the top-left corner.
I picked it up and flipped it over. On the back, two words were written:
"Found you."
The handwriting was delicate, exactly like the marker pen writing on the rooftop.
In the photo, I was standing downstairs, looking up at the sixth floor. Someone must have taken it while I was staring at the windows. A handwritten timestamp was in the bottom-right corner, half-covered by the stain, but three numbers were still legible:
03:12.
Three twelve.
The exact moment I looked up.
I didn't stay a second longer. I turned and left. After about ten steps, I couldn't help glancing back. The sixth-floor windows were still dark. But I couldn't be sure—if, in the split second I turned away, something inside those windows had moved.